The UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) is considering borrowing money from banks and other investors in order to meet a goal set by governments at COP29 in November to increase spending by a group of funds that support developing countries.
At the talks in Baku, under pressure from small island nations and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), all governments agreed to “pursue efforts to at least triple annual outflows” between 2022 and 2030 from UN climate funds like the GCF.
But with climate finance from wealthy governments faltering, Alain Beauvillard, the GCF’s director of strategy, policy and innovation, told Climate Home that the fund was considering tapping capital markets to help meet this goal.
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He said the GCF has an “ambitious” goal to manage $50 billion by 2030 – set in 2023 by its executive director – but foreign aid budgets are “not growing fast, some are falling and basically Ukraine is taking the greatest part”, so “we need some other sources of funding”.
The GCF will also look at accessing international financial assets called Special Drawing Rights and benefiting from proposals for global taxes on polluting economic sectors, he added.
Climate justice
But borrowing is controversial. Harjeet Singh, a frequent observer of GCF board meetings and director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation in India, told Climate Home that “turning to capital markets to scale up climate finance may address short-term funding gaps but fundamentally undermines the principles of climate justice”.
In his view, it “prioritises profit-driven projects like renewable energy over critical adaptation efforts and addressing loss and damage – both of which are essential for vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of the climate crisis”.
Those lending money to the GCF on financial markets would expect to be paid back with interest. While clean energy projects generally produce revenue which the GCF could use to pay off lenders, it is harder to make profit from rebuilding a hurricane victim’s house or constructing a seawall to defend against rising sea levels.
The COP29 language about tripling outflows from the climate funds was only added into the finance agreement at midnight on the last night of the tense summit, giving governments no time to debate the exact wording. The amounts and details have yet to be worked out.
Michai Robertson, finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told Climate Home that its inclusion was a compromise made to them and the LDCs, following a dramatic temporary walk-out on the last afternoon of the talks.
While government aid agencies like USAID and multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank are at least largely controlled by developed countries, the GCF has a board made up of an equal number of developed and developing country representatives.
Aid agencies and MDBs often favour finance in the form of loans, emissions-cutting projects and big countries as recipients of their money. But the GCF has a mandate to invest half of its money in adapting to climate change, 50% of which goes to LDCs, small island developing states and African governments.
Open to interpretation
Richard Sherman, a South African climate negotiator who was at COP29, told Climate Home that developing countries assumed that tripling outflows from these funds also meant tripling inflows “and definitely not doing three times more with what they are currently getting”.
“Now it seems the Baku language means everything to anyone,” he said. “This will probably be the start of endless negotiations of what we actually agreed to.”
Sherman warned that the GCF’s board and its trustee – the World Bank – would have to agree if the GCF is to enter the capital markets, adding that getting money from SDRs and solidarity levies would also be “complicated”. He called these proposals “stock-standard developing-country treasury approaches”.
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Some UN funds already borrow money. In 2022, the International Fund for Agricultural Development was the first UN agency other than the World Bank to access the capital markets to lend to rural communities in poverty.
Last Tuesday, the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) – one of the world’s largest multilateral climate funds – issued its first bond, borrowing $500 million to lend to clean technology project developers in developing countries. This process was begun by former CIF head Mafalda Duarte, who now leads the GCF.
Current CIF head Tariye Gbadegesin called the bond issue “a historic moment for climate finance” which would “multiply the funds available for scaling up clean technology and infrastructure in developing countries – not in ten years, but now, when it’s most critically needed”.
She noted that demand for the bonds was more than six times higher than supply, describing this as “an enormous vote of confidence and a sign of the keen market interest in backing high-quality clean energy projects”.
Carbon levy for adaptation funding
When it comes to adaptation, the business case for going to the financial markets is far less clear. That leaves the UN climate funds that are focused on supporting projects to help vulnerable communities protect themselves from extreme weather and rising seas with fewer options for meeting the COP29 goal.
The UN’s Adaptation Fund, which has blazed a trail for this type of finance for 17 years, has to go cap in hand to wealthy government donors every year to solicit contributions in a bid to meet an annual target that is now set at $300 million. That is a challenge when national budgets are tight and needs are growing across proliferating climate funds.
For example, the fund garnered contributions of only around $133 million through COP29 last year – and while it’s not living hand to mouth, it has a significant pipeline of projects seeking funding. Given this tough backdrop, its head Mikko Ollikainen told Climate Home it was encouraging to see donor governments commit to tripling outflows, which he took as “a vote of confidence” in the Adaptation Fund’s work.
“The direction of travel is quite clear – that the needs are increasing and the adaptation finance gap is growing, and the decision from Baku would enable us to partly bridge that gap,” he said. “But, of course, this needs to be implemented – and then the finance, the funds would need to materialise to match this target that the (government) parties have set.”
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For the Adaptation Fund, the COP29 decision means increasing its allocations to projects and programmes to $400 million a year by 2030, which translates into an annual growth rate of 25%, Ollikainen said.
There is one other source of finance the Adaptation Fund can look to: countries have agreed it can receive a 5% levy on emissions reductions registered with the new UN carbon market – which could see credits start to change hands this year after its rulebook was finalised at COP29.
But previous experience with a similar levy on an earlier version of a UN offsetting regime, the Clean Development Mechanism, was disappointing. Revenue amounted to only 10% of the Adaptation Fund’s resources due to rock-bottom emissions permit prices.
Ollikainen said “there hasn’t been any sort of authoritative estimate of what we might be expecting” from the new market but welcomed the fact that countries had set a quantitative target for UN climate funds for the first time, signalling they are willing to ensure it is met.
Pressure on funds
Two other multilateral funds that mainly channel money for adaptation projects in poorer countries – the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund – have struggled even more to get what they need, cancelling donor events at COP29 due to a lack of commitments.
Joe Thwaites, senior advocate for international climate finance with the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said the COP29 goal amounts to tripling outflows from all the funds combined to an annual $5.2 billion.
Donor governments will need to make new pledges to help them reach the the target, but it also puts pressure on the funds themselves to do more with the money they have in their coffers, he said, noting that “getting the money out of the door… has been one of the challenges”.
“It doesn’t get countries off the hook but if [the funds] can manage their money better, they could leverage that and get greater outflows off the same capital base,” Thwaites said.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; additional reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)
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Green Climate Fund looks at capital-market borrowing to meet COP29 goal
With the U.S. bombing Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closed, energy experts say countries transitioning to renewables will be more resilient in the “face of the shock.”
The United States’ war on Iran could fundamentally alter how countries consume and generate energy and hamper international progress in combating climate change, a panel of energy experts said today.
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One month into the US and Israel’s war on Iran, at least 60 countries have taken emergency measures in response to the subsequent global energy crisis, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
So far, these countries have announced nearly 200 policies to save fuel, support consumers and boost domestic energy supplies.
Carbon Brief has drawn on tracking by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and other sources to assess the global policy response, just as a temporary ceasefire is declared.
Since the start of the war in late February, both sides have bombed vital energy infrastructure across the region as Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – a key waterway through which around a fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) trade passes.
This has made it impossible to export the usual volumes of fossil fuels from the region and, as a result, sent prices soaring.
Around 30 nations, from Norway to Zambia, have cut fuel taxes to help people struggling with rising costs, making this by far the most common domestic policy response to the crisis.
Some countries have stressed the need to boost domestic renewable-energy construction, while others – including Japan, Italy and South Korea – have opted to lean more on coal, at least in the short term.
The most wide-ranging responses have been in Asia, where countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels from the Middle East have implemented driving bans, fuel rationing and school closures in order to reduce demand.
‘Largest disruption’
On 28 February, the US and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, triggering conflict across the Middle East and sending shockwaves around the world.
There have been numerous assaults on energy infrastructure, including an Iranian attack on the world’s largest LNG facility in Qatar and an Israeli bombing of Iran’s gas sites.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, is causing what the IEA has called the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.
A fifth of the world’s oil and LNG is normally shipped through this region, with 90% of those supplies going to destinations in Asia. Without these supplies, fuel prices have surged.
Governments around the world have taken emergency actions in response to this new energy crisis, shielding their citizens from price spikes, conserving energy where possible and considering longer-term energy policies.
Even with a two-week ceasefire announced, the energy crisis is expected to continue, given the extensive damage to infrastructure and continuing uncertainties.
Asian crunch
Carbon Brief has used tracking by the IEA, news reports, government announcements and internal monitoring by the thinktank E3G to assess the range of national responses to the energy crisis roughly one month into the Iran war.
In total, Carbon Brief has identified 185 relevant policies, announcements and campaigns from 60 national governments.
As the map below shows, these measures are concentrated in east and south Asia. These regions are facing the most extreme disruption, largely due to their reliance on oil and gas supplies from the Middle East.
Nations including Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India are already spending billions of dollars on fuel subsidies to protect people from rising costs.
At least 16 Asian countries are also taking drastic measures to reduce fuel consumption. For example, the Philippines has declared a “state of national emergency”, which includes limiting air conditioning in public buildings and subsidising public transport.
Other examples from the region include the government in Bangladesh asking the public and businesses to avoid unnecessary lighting, Pakistan reducing the speed limit on highways and Laos encouraging people to work from home.
Europe – which was hit hard by the 2022 energy crisis due to its reliance on Russian gas – is less immediately exposed to the current crisis than Asia. However, many nations are still heavily reliant on gas, including supplies from Qatar.
The continent is already feeling the effects of higher global energy prices as countries compete for more limited resources.
At least 18 European nations have introduced measures to help people with rising costs. Spain, which is relatively insulated from the crisis due to the high share of renewables in its electricity supply, nevertheless announced a €5bn aid package, with at least six measures to support consumers.
Many African countries, while also less reliant on direct fossil-fuel supplies via the Strait of Hormuz than Asia, are still facing the strain of higher import bills. Some, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia, are also facing severe fuel shortages.
There have been fewer new policies across the Americas, which have been comparatively insulated from the energy crisis so far. One outlier is Chile, which is among the region’s biggest fuel importers and is, therefore, more exposed to global price increases.
Tax cuts
The most common types of policy response to the energy crisis so far have been efforts to protect people and businesses from the surge in fuel prices.
At least 28 nations, including Italy, Brazil and Australia, have introduced a total of 31 measures to cut taxes – and, therefore, prices – on fuel.
Even across Africa, where state revenues are already stretched, some nations – including Namibia and South Africa – are cutting fuel levies in a bid to stabilise prices.
Another 17 countries, including Mexico and Poland, have directly capped the price of fuel. Others, such as France and the UK, have opted for more targeted fuel subsidies, designed to support specific vulnerable groups and industries.
These measures are all shown in the dark blue “consumer support” bars in the chart below.
Such measures can directly help consumers, but some leaders, NGOs and financial experts have noted that there is also the risk of them driving inflation and reinforcing reliance on the existing fossil fuel-based system.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, spoke in favour of short-term measures to “smooth the shock”, but noted that “broad-based and open-ended measures may add excessively to demand”.
Measures to conserve energy, of the type that many developing countries in Asia have implemented extensively, have been described by the IEA as “more effective and fiscally sustainable than broad-based subsidies”.
So far, there have been at least 23 such measures introduced to limit the use of transport, particularly private cars.
These include Lithuania cutting train fares, two Australian states making public transport free and Myanmar and South Korea asking people to only drive their cars on certain days.
Clean vs coal
At least eight countries have announced plans to either increase their use of coal or review existing plans to transition away from coal, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. These include Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Germany and Italy.
These measures broadly involve delaying coal-plant closure, as in Italy, or allowing older sites to operate at higher rates, as in Japan – rather than building more coal plants.
There has been extensive coverage of how the energy crisis is “driving Asia back to coal”. However, as Bloomberg columnist David Fickling has noted, this shift is relatively small and likely to be offset by a move to cheap solar power in the longer term.
Indeed, some countries have begun to consider changes to the way they use energy going forward, amid a crisis driven by the spiralling costs of fossil-fuel imports.
Leaders in India, Barbados and the UK have explicitly stressed the importance of a structural shift to using clean power. Governments in France and the Philippines are among those linking new renewable-energy announcements with the unfolding crisis.
New renewable-energy capacity will take time to come online, albeit substantially less time than developing new fossil-fuel generation. In the meantime, some nations are also taking short-term measures to make their road transport less reliant on fossil fuels.
For example, the Chilean government has enabled taxi drivers to access preferential credit for purchasing electric vehicles (EVs). Cambodia has cut import taxes on EVs and Laos has lowered excise taxes on them.
Finally, there have been some signs that countries are reconsidering their future exposure to imported fossil fuels, given the current economics of oil and gas.
The New Zealand government has indicated that a plan to build a new LNG terminal by 2027 now faces uncertainty. Reuters reported that Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has told the government it wanted to abandon a plan to build a new LNG-fired power plant in Vietnam, in favour of renewables.
The post Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis
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